


The Whale

by Skepsis_Forever



Category: Surprise Fandom
Genre: Alegory, Bad end, Cosmic Horror Story, Manipulation, Metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:20:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25136788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skepsis_Forever/pseuds/Skepsis_Forever
Summary: Something I've had on my mind for a long while. It probably needs polishing, but it says what I envisioned it said.This work makes a hidden reference to a fandom. The first person who figures out what the Whale is and posts in the comments will have a shout-out in the author's notes.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 4





	The Whale

**Author's Note:**

> Something I've had on my mind for a long while. It probably needs polishing, but it says what I envisioned it said.  
> This work makes a hidden reference to a fandom. The first person who figures out what the Whale is and posts in the comments will have a shout-out in the author's notes.

Once, there was a tribe, living on the edge of a body of water. The tribe did as tribes did: hunted, gathered, created works of practicality and of art, discussed and philosophised.  
From time to time, a great white whale would come to their shores and then leave. Whether at first the tribe feared this creature is lost, but soon it became part of the cycle of life and time. It was considered magnificent and some people worshiped it as a sigh of a God or Gods, others as a God itself. The elders often meditated on the nature of the whale and found it comforting.  
At an unknown time, the tribe became hungry and the natural order around them turned harsh, and they turned to the whale. Desperate hunters threw themselves at the whale and cut great chunks of it to feed their people, fully expecting the whale to met out retribution and hoping to exchange their own meat for its, lest their own eat their flesh. Yet the whale stayed placid, letting the hunters take their toll, never showing discomfort. When they were done, the whale left and when it returned, it did so pristine.  
Now convinced of the divine nature of the whale, the tribe worshiped it in true. The elders received visions that the gullet of the whale could give life everlasting in spirit if not in body so in time, the elder and weak happily sacrificed itself to it.  
And for a time, all was well.  
But what they did not know was that the whale was not satisfied with these meager sacrifices. Their souls tasted... stale, used up by the years, bland in their stress-free life that it had facilitated by its unwilling offerings. The whale had indeed felt no pain or loss or hate or anything of the sort at the parting of its flesh, so it was not what drove it to what it would do next.  
Still, the whale devised a plan to bring spice to its meals.  
The tribe's view on spirituality and the whale were not homogeneous, though conflict as such did not exist between its members. The different views and ways of worshiping the whale had their places in the tribe, even if some of its members believed that the actions of others to have no meaning to the whale, as opposed to their own.  
As time wore on, the whale taught the elders of the tribe of the powers they could rend from its flesh, and of the way of pacifism and of protection towards their tribe. Yet it also observed the discontent, the ones that wanted _more_ or _different_ , and it knew it could use them.  
Secretly, it sent visions to those of like mind of a black whale that could give them great power if they would encounter it, and a place in the night when they would do so. Then, it used its powers to change its skin black and came at that time and place to meet its new pawns.  
It told them that it was a brother of the white whale and the strongest of the kin by far. It told them how to use the power in the flesh of either for greater power than it had given to the elders, to be used for their own devices and desires. It decried the tribe weak and stagnant and called them the true heirs of the tribe. It used its powers to make them think these were their own ideas and that they were masters of the black whale, that it and its powers would come to them through _their own will_ and that the black whale and the flesh of both whales was a conduit to their own, inherent powers that the elders both lacked and kept from others.  
Time wore on, and the black whale worshipers created great and terrible things, chimeras and monsters and _worse_ and proclaimed the black whale their greatest God. The elders were weary, skeptical, but the tribe had been open-minded for as long as its history could be remembered, and they did not except a threat from the inside, always taugh and teaching themselves that their calling was to protect from threats without.  
Until the whale, in its white guise came, and decried the creations it had nourished in its black guise, and the worshippers of the black whale. The elders, in their conviction of their God's goodness and purity, slaughtered the black whale worshipers' creations - their children - and exiled them from the tribe.  
The black whale worshipers were understandably angry, but in the minority, and so they left. But the whale, in its black guise, came to them and whispered words of vengeance and "justice" against the "weak" but numerous tribesmen and its God.  
The black whale worshipers spiraled into conquest and enslavement of other tribes, of breaking and killing the weak and elevating the survivors to their own ideals, that one day they would rule their original tribe again and the rich shores from whence they came.  
Centuries and millennia passed and the white whale continued to teach the original tribe peace, passivity and tranquility, while the dark whale continued to teach its worshipers hate and revenge.  
And finally, it was time. The whale, in its black form, led the exiles in a cataclysmic war to reclaim their lands, while in its white form, rallying the defenders.  
It did not matter who would win, indeed, there would be no winners, the whale planned, only the endless food and souls the would fuel their madness.  
After a long period of war, when both sides were close to depletion, the whale decided it had eaten enough. It manipulated the black worshipers into all but destroying themselves, and congratulated the tribe for its victory.  
It would continue to cultivate and grow the two factions until they were ready for another cataclysmic war, when it would gorge on their experience-laden souls once again.  
And again.  
And again.  
For eternity.  
And all the while, they would thank it for its gifts.  
And it would eat and laugh and laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> Congrats to FriendlyPoltergeist for being the first to figure it out!


End file.
